wgpu-native VS pathfinder

The Mach engine project has prebuilt Dawn libraries and also a simplified build-from-source process using the Zig build system, see:

https://machengine.org/pkg/mach-gpu-dawn/

It's also possible to use wgpu-native in C/C++ projects as prebuilt library, see:

https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu-native

It is based on the wgpu-native implementation (Firefox backend) but I plan on adding a receipe for using it with Dawn (Chrome backend) as well.

go-webgpu provides binding for wgpu-native (a safe and portable GPU abstraction in Rust, implementing WebGPU API).

Rust, C++

When you look at graphics APIs in Rust practically everything is pointing towards, and telling you to use, wgpu, which abstracts over Vulkan, Metal, DX11/12, GLES and WebGPU and is based on, drumroll, WebGPU. Hardly surprising as it's the backend firefox is going to use. And yes it has a C API, too.

Probably the easiest option would be to target wgpu-native prebuilt binaries but these don't have iOS/Android (unsure if wgpu-native supports iOS/Android at all)

WGPU is the underlying implementation for WebGPU in Firefox and it has C bindings: https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu-native.git.

https://github.com/coconut-xr/apfel-kruemel works today, I only know about battery-optimized software in the context of games though.

https://felt.com/blog/svg-to-canvas-part-2-building-interact... and https://github.com/servo/pathfinder/ might also be of interest.

Parts of Servo to enable the use of the GPU for compositing layers were merged into Firefox years ago.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-f...

It's a shame that Patrick Walton didn't get a chance to finish his work on the Pathfinder GPU renderer.

>Pathfinder 3 is a fast, practical, GPU-based rasterizer for fonts and vector graphics using OpenGL 3.0+, OpenGL ES 3.0+, WebGL 2, and Metal.

https://github.com/servo/pathfinder

You might be interested in https://github.com/servo/pathfinder

It uses too much CPU and performance leaves much to be desired compared to Chromium. They were going to use Pathfinder in Firefox to solve this problem, but since Pathfinder is discontinued due to the massive layoffs at Mozilla, the project was abandoned. And they need a replacement IMO.

I am not an expert in the area, just somebody who read up on it after realizing desktop in VR does not work out for me (and usually low res is not a problem).

I think something like https://github.com/servo/pathfinder (newer) and as you mentioned SDF (older) are the latest approaches.

This is exciting! And, by the way, are you planning to implement something similar to Servo's Pathfinder in Firefox?

Also on my list was pathfinder. There the documented crate is vastly different from https://github.com/servo/pathfinder which looks much more promising – it comes with a few examples, some of wihch might help me get started, maybe?

Have you checked out the Pathfinder library?

https://github.com/servo/pathfinder

Don't forget gpu-based text rendering (e.g. #1, #2, #3). It's still in its infant stages, and seems to be mostly untouched over the past 5 years, but I suspect it will become the preferred method for rendering text later.